President Obama is done with the state of grace resulting from the presidential election and his unquestionable victory. His Health Care plan, highly contested by thousands of demonstrators, has been but reluctantly endorsed. His party lost two seats in two key elections. He must realize how versatile people are and how hard the exercise of supreme power is.

Our President would certainly not contradict the above point with the never-ending strikes affecting the country, over the slightest proposal of reform. The socialists who won the regional elections with a poor 30% of 48% of voters* and cannot boast, are adding fuel to the flames and only dream of knocking over Nicolas Sarkozy. They are craving for power and their priority is the 2012 presidential election, not in any case the difficulties of the country affected by the last financial crisis, like all the nations in the world.

The Emperor Napoleon the 1^st said one day: “I love the people, but not the mob”**, thus stressing that the ideal of the people was always betrayed by the noisy and down-to-earth mob***, quick to flare up in anger to protect their privileges to the detriment of a long-forgotten ideal.

 *although they had nothing new to propose to their electors, except the necessity of crushing the President.

**In French: ”J’aime le people, mais pas la populace”

***the mob, all social categories indiscriminately taken into account, demonstrates the herd instinct and always privileges violence to the detriment of dialogue and sensible consensus. Historically (and hysterically) the mob sent thousands of innocent victims to the guillotine during the Reign of Terror. Nowadays, the mob wrecks public buildings, throws Molotov cocktails at shops, sets cars on fire …..

Buttercups, crocuses, violets, narcisses and forget-me-nots, unfurl their delicate corollas across the Drôme’s hills and fields, creating a wonderful impressionist tapestry. Gorgeous sprays of forsythias, tulip trees and prunuses illuminate the early hours of a long-awaited Spring. Tender shoots glimmer under the first sunbeams, after the night drizzle. Renoir and Monet, hidden behind a rainbow, gaze at such a magnificent sight and smile at each other. It seems so familiar to them.

I take Eliot, my sweet little pug, out for a walk and while walking, a William Wordsworth’s poem comes back to my mind, like a friendly song.

“I wander’d lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o’er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.”

The so romantic Lake Poets resurface after so many years. I suddenly feel extremely grateful to my English teacher who taught us the beauty of those unforgettable verses and rhymes.

Eliot frisks about wildly. I am incredibly serene.

Last summer, I migrated from Calais (North of France) to Romans-sur-Isère (South of France), a transhumance by car much more exhausting than flying to Beijing in a comfortable Boeing 747 (and above all much more perilous with all the mad drivers on the motorways).

Had I suspected how exhausting a moving house could be, I probably would have given up. I will spare you my misadventures, due to a bunch of unscrupulous furniture movers built like tanks (one of them wearing the ferocious moustache of a Turkish janissary), who carelessly chucked the furniture into my new flat, which soon became an absolute shambles (and I had chosen the most expensive option, which guaranteed first-class service!). My grandmother used to say that movers could be very careless and do more damage than a fire. I now understand what she meant when I went over the list of broken items that will never be replaced nor compensated (not speaking of the sentimental value attached to most of them); since the parent company puts the blame on its franchisee, who in his turn suggests to lodge a claim to their parent company, and so on. A person who has never been caught in such a vicious circle cannot understand the terrible feeling of powerlessness that overwhelms the unfortunate “customer” (who, in addition, has the distressing impression of being taken for a fool).

Shall I go on now about my trials with a French company (with a logo in shape of a common citrus) that needed four months to complete the proper installation of my internet connection associated with the unlimited internet telephone (and we are in 2010!).  Technology and efficiency are two different things, of course. However, I cannot help sharing with you the challenge of staying cool when trying to get in touch with the customer service of a company with which you entered into a service contract, widely advertised through the media (you realise you have naïvely fallen right into the trap and now live to regret it!). Companies are obviously doing their best to avoid dialogue with their customers. This is why they have set up such complicated networks of stubborn answering machines that soon drive you completely crazy.

The average citizen, who for example, needs to contact customer service, must go round an obstacle course to get in touch with a valid interlocutor. You first have to dial the number written at the bottom of your contract, specifically attributed to help you solve your problems. And then, welcome to a Kafkaesque world! A toneless voice asks you to identify yourself. Then, if you call for information about your contract (or your invoice) hit 1, if you encounter technical problems hit 2, then 3 and….. why not until 9, then hit hash or star to validate. If the infernal machine doesn’t recognize your customer reference (15 digits or more to punch in) or if your unfortunate forefinger slipped on the wrong key, you are asked to start again from the very beginning (“Sorry, but we don’t understand your request”). If you insist and decide that you definitely want to speak to an operator (sometimes answering from a platform in Morocco or India), hit 0 and wait. The toneless voice keeps on repeating at regular intervals: “Hold the line, an operator will be with you shortly“. You’ll note that the voice doesn’t add “please”, which would be a minimum of courtesy. While, between two messages, the Four Seasons of Vivaldi saturate your poor tympanum during minutes that seem like hours, you persist in believing that somebody, moved by your extreme perseverance will finally answer. You will note with me (but too late) that the phone number indicated in your contract is not “free of charge” and you will have a nervous breakdown upon receiving your next phone bill, particularly if you had to use your mobile, because a French company (with a logo in shape of a common citrus) needed four months etc… (See above). After ten desperate attempts, you might get lucky and finally speak to an alleged expert who, like all experts, has a regrettable propensity to take customers for absolute idiots with an IQ close to zero. Sometimes the line cuts off and after three or four (or more) new attempts, you will have to set out your tragic story for the third or fourth or nth time to a new interlocutor, who will not understand that you are quite frankly fed-up and rather on edge but who will abruptly recommend that you keep your cool!

This seems to be the philosophy of our world today. Whatever your problems, you better be able to cope with them on your own. Don’t count on anybody else but yourself. I wonder whether for most of my country fellows, the words “solidarity” and “fraternity“ are anything else but a string of decorative ideograms engraved on the frontispiece of our public buildings.

Historians ascribe to our King Louis the 15th the unfortunate remark: “I don’t care what happens after I am gone”.  I sometimes wonder if this might also be the hallmark of our new century, but then I soon begin to have hope again in the capacity of human nature to surpass itself in times of trouble and absolute emergency. Thinking of all those who regularly come to their fellow creatures’ rescue in case of natural disasters often at the risk of their life (and it’s only one example), makes us forget for a while the incivilities, the daily ordinary violence and the frenzied individualism of today’s unscrupulous society. Let’s please pay a tribute to all the anonymous heroes that save the honour of our world.

I’m back again

My previous blog post dates back to June of 2009. How time flies! It’s like sand running through my fingers. I cannot or don’t know how to retain it… It must be said in my defence I was plunged into the hustle and bustle of life, following my decision to move from the North⁽¹⁾ to the South of France⁽²⁾, which was quite an adventure! I’ll probably revert to the subject later on. The journey gives one the chance to travel through some of nice sites in France, if not necessarily the most prestigious or the most quoted in travel guides.

I am compelled to recognize that over the last eight months, the devastating headlines of the Press could have been a copy-and-paste of the 2008 ones.  Plane crashes, earthquakes and cyclones resulting in thousands of desperate homeless people, terrorist bombings and hostage takings have become an everyday occurrence.  Moreover in 2009, the world had to face the most severe financial crisis ever sustained since the dramatic 1929 stock-market crash, with subsequent tough social conflicts, permanent closure of factories, fast-rising jobless rate. Well-established banks went bankrupt (not preventing, however, top managers and traders to make scandalous bonuses while the average citizen sweats blood to maintain his level of life).

Just the same as ever… a matter of routine for a world that is becoming totally crazy.

Our incapacity to influence the run of events, or our inertia or our fatalism, seems to have discouraged many, although not I (and I am sure others are with me.) I refuse to add my name to the long list of doomsayers. This is why from now on I’ll do my best “to mildly relate serious things” ⁽³⁾ (if not without emotion) and to share with you some privileged moments, as if we were good old friends sitting by the fireside⁽⁴⁾ with a “nice cup of tea ” ⁽⁵⁾ at hand.

⁽¹⁾Where the whims of fate had settled me for some years, more precisely in Calais, just facing England.

⁽²⁾In Romans-sur-Isère, an enchanting little town whose charms and secrets I will be delighted to reveal and share with you.

 ⁽³⁾Alexandre Jardin, a brilliant French writer and film-maker born in 1965.

⁽⁴⁾While I am writing these lines, it is heavily snowing outside. “It’s been years since we had such bad weather” they say in town. To think I decided to migrate to the South to find sun in February, as a good friend of mine is still trying to convince me!

⁽⁵⁾I could have chosen a nice glass of white burgundy, but I don’t want to turn the anti-alcoholic leagues against me. One may be brave but not necessarily foolhardy!